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Farmington Two Hundred Years Ago 



A PAPER 



READ AT A 



(WicctinQ 



OP THE 



Colonial Dames of Connecticut 



AT THE 



Home of Miss, Theodate Pope 

MAY TWENTY-NINTH 
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SIX 



By JULIUS GAY 



IbartforD press 

The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company 
1906 




Qass '■ ' -' jj, . 

Book , FaU2 ^^U> 



Farmington Two Hundred Years Ago 



A PAPER 



READ AT A 



eeting 



OF THE 



Colonial Dames of Connecticut 



AT THE 



Home of Miss Theodate Pope 

MAY TWENTY-NINTH 
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SIX 



By JULIUS GAY 



IbartforD press 

The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company 
1906 






Gift 

Author 

(Ptrson) 

24 OCT 1908 



ADDRESS. 



Madame President and members of the Society of 
Colonial Dames : The jBrst formal visit of your society 
to this old colonial village seems to demand not only words 
of hearty vv^elcome but some introduction to the town as it 
was in colonial days. I will not weary you with any 
formal history, but, during the short time available, will 
try to give you a few passing glimpses of Farmington as it 
was on the 29th day of May, 1706. 

Farmington Village two hundred years ago had just 
passed through a season of upheaval. Its internal econ- 
omy suggested a calm after a storm at sea, when the 
waves are subsiding and the sun begins to shine through 
the clouds. The Rev. Samuel Hooker had been eight 
and a half years dead, and through all these years, his 
flock without a shepherd, had striven in vain to choose 
his successor. Some desired " the worthy Mr. John Buck- 
ley," some " the much esteemed Mr. Jabez Fitch," and 
some the much esteemed " Mr, Eliphalet Adams," and 
numerous other candidates divided the preferences of the 
worshipers. As time went on the struggle waxed fiercer. 
Partisan orators in church meetings, and in town meetings, 
expressed opinions of each other that filled the county 
court with suits of libel. Town meetings were broken up 
and anarchy prevailed. A fast day proposed was voted 
down, the orator of the day quoting the prophets of 
old, " Behold ye fast for strife and debate and to 
smite with the fist of wickedness." Finally the General 
Assembly of the colony appointed " the reverend min- 
isters of the towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethers- 
field to procure a minister for Farmington, who are 
hereby orderec^ to receive him and pay him as formerly 



until this Court do order otherwise or themselves 
agree." The choice fell upon the Rev. Samuel Whit- 
man, a divine of another colony, free from all local 
entanglements, and with sufficient power of will to 
hold his own until the storm abated. At the same time 
a large number of the contestants withdrew and founded 
a new church at the Great Swamp. So peace reigned, and 
Sergeant John Wadsworth and Samuel Newell were ap- 
pointed a committee to make a journey through the wilder- 
ness to Nantasket in the latter days of November to nego- 
tiate with the chosen divine. The treasury was empty, but 
so urgent seemed the expedition that the town voted to 
borrow money for the outfit at the rate of 200 per cent, 
per annum. The embassy was successful. The salary 
agreed upon was one hundred pounds per annum, but as 
gold and silver were well nigh unknown, the town subse- 
quently voted to pay in wheat, rye, Indian corn, pease, and 
pork at a fixed price per bushel and pound, an arrange- 
ment suggestive of the donation party of sixty years ago. 
In addition to all these commodities the town voted " as a 
voluntary action " that, upon some set day appointed by 
the deacons, " the inhabitants, improving themselves and 
teams that way, will draw him his annual supply of fire- 
wood." Imagine all the farmers and all their oxen and ox- 
leds driving in one after another and piling the minister- 
ial door-yard high with logs. What was the good man to 
do with all these logs? The late Commander Hooker, 
U. S. N., wrote me how the matter was managed in the 
house of his ancestors, a few rods higher up the hill, which 
he remembered as the " Old Red College " of his father. 
Deacon Edward Hooker. He says, " The kitchen was 
floored with smooth, flat, mountain stones, and had a big 
door at the eastern end, and originally at each end, and my 
father used to say that when his father was a boy, they 
used to drive a yoke of oxen with a sled load of wood into 
one door and up to the big fireplace, then unload the wood 
upon the fire and drive the team out of the other door." 



5 

If the arrangements for heating were somewhat primi- 
tive, so were those for hghting. The fierce blaze of fire- 
place logs gave sufficient light for the good dame's spin- 
ning wheel, and for many household labors. Oil was 
unknown, and tallow candles were so great a luxury, that 
a cheaper substitute was much employed. In 1696 the 
town voted that no inhabitant should be prohibited from 
felling pine-trees in our sequestered lands for candle wood. 
The same right was granted in 1704. The Rev. Francis 
Higginson, in his " New England Plantation," written in 
the year 1629, says, " yea, our pine-trees that are the most 
plentiful of all wood, doth allow us plenty of candles 
which are very useful in a house ; and they are such candles 
as the Indians use, having no other, and they are nothing 
else but the wood of the pine-tree cloven into little slices, 
something thin, which are so fu.ll of the moisture of tur- 
pentine and pitch, that they burn as clear as a torch." 
The houses of the village, thus warmed and lighted, were 
with the year 1700 beginning to take on an architectural 
elegance unknown to the barn-like homes of the first set- 
tlers. They were two stories high, the upper story much 
projecting in front, and ornamented vvith a row of con- 
spicuous pendants. Of this style but one house remains, 
the central of the original three on High Street. The ■ 
ground on which we stand today was then the pasture 
land of William Judd, but by the potency of modern 
magic a colonial house, true to the highest aspirations of 
the builders of 1706, has arisen on its most commanding 
site. The forests for miles around have yielded their 
choicest trees to shade its lawns, and, as Tennyson tells 
us in the days of old Amphion : 

" The gouty oak began to move, 
And flounder into hornpipes. 
The mountain stirred its busy crown, 
And, as tradition teaches, 



Young ashes pirouetted down, 
Coquetting with young beeches, 

And from the valleys underneath 
Came little copses climbing. 



Old elms came breaking from the vine, 
The vine streamed out to follow. 
And, sweating rosin, plumped the pine 
From many a cloudy hollow." 

The first meeting-house, the first of three, stood on 
the main street midway between mountain and river, and 
equally distant from the North and South meadow gates. 
The worshipers were then, and for the next quarter of a 
century, summoned to attend by beat of drum. The 
deacons still lined out the psalm, and musical instruments 
and dissensions in the choir were unknown. Of the style 
of architecture in this old building we know little. There 
were doors on the east and south, and probably on the 
west. Negroes sat upon a bench at the north end, and, 
as the capacity of the house became less and less sufficient, 
individuals were allowed to build themselves seats any- 
where in the gallery, " on condition that they do not 
damnify the other seats in the meeting-house." The allot- 
ment of seats below was termed dignifying the house, and 
the seating committee was ordered to " have respect to 
age, office, and estate, so far as it tendeth to make a man 
respectable." The youths and the unmarried were forced 
up-stairs where they gave the tithingman sufficient occupa- 
tion. There was one exception in favor of certain sedate 
young women. " The town by vote gave liberty to Lieu- 
tenant Judd's two daughters, and the Widow Judd's two 
daughters, and the two eldest daughters of John Steele to 
erect, or cause to be erected, a seat for their proper use 
at the south end of the meeting-house at the left hand as 
they go in at the door, provided it be not prejudicial to 
the passage and doors." Seats too were reserved for the 
guard of eight men who marched in with muskets at 



shoulder. The Indian atrocities at Deerfield and vicinity 
were but recent, and the meeting-house itself had long 
been a fort as well as a house of prayer. In 1674 Deacon 
Bull makes a charge for a joist for the fort gate of the 
church, and in 1675 for the irons of the fort gate, and 
again in 1676. In 1704, two years before the date of 
which we write, the town ordered seven houses fortified 
in which were to be lodged the town's stock of powder, 
lead, bullets, flints, and half-pikes. The dreaded storm 
passed by, and only those men were lost who marched to 
the help of their neighbors in the north. The Tunxis 
tribe was always peaceably disposed. They had been so 
badly bullied by the Mohawks from the west, and the 
Pocumtucks from the north that they were only too glad 
to live at peace with the whites. Schools were early es- 
tablished for their children and numerous adults joined 
the church. Their fort had been where the Country Club 
now plays golf, but at the urgent request of the farmers 
had been removed to the site of their graveyard, just 
east of the present railroad station. According to Deacon 
Elijah Porter, just before removing, they had their last 
battle with the Stockbridge tribe. They were having the 
worst of it, and were being driven back on their wig- 
wams, when their squaws formed a battalion, and falling 
on the Stockbridge flank saved the day. So long as the 
danger continued the town trained-band was frequently 
drilled. Absence cost two and sixpence, as the account- 
book of Deacon Bull the town treasurer abundantly shows. 
He was also the principal armorer of the village. For 
John North, Senior, he made a new sword costing seven 
shillings and sixpence. Other swords he repaired. For 
.Robert Porter he made a halberd at an expense of three 
shillings. The halberd was the distinguishing arm of the 
sergeant, and consisted of three parts; the spear to thrust 
or charge in battle, the hatchet for cutting, and the hook 
for pulling down fascines. They are still used in the orna- 
mental display of the Swiss Papal Guards. Pike heads he 



made for Goodman Lanckton, John Steele, James Bird, 
and Sergeant Stanley, at three shillings each. The pike ^ 
was still an important weapon. In Markham's " Soldier's 
Accidence " we are instructed that the pikemen shall have 
strong, straight, yet nimble pikes of ash-wood, well headed 
with steel . . . and the full size of every pike shall be 
fifteen foot besides the head." The pikemen were de- 
scribed " as a bewtiful sight in the Battell and a great ter- 
rour to the enemies." 

But enough of the pomp and circumstance of war. 
Next to the church, and contributory to its welfare, the 
school had a prominent place in the hearts of the people, 
not so much for its own sake as because it was so contribu- 
tory. It being, says the colonial code of 1650, "one 
chiefe project of that old deluder Sathan to keepe men 
from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times, 
keeping them in an vnknown tongue. . . . and that 
Learning may not bee buried in the grave of o'' Fore- 
fathers It is therefore ordered that .... that 

euery Townshipp after the Lord hath increased them to 
the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith ap- 
point one wjthin theire Towne to teach all such children as 
shall resorte to him, to write and read." A grammar 
school for instruction in Latin and Greek was required 
when the town had increased to one hundred families. 
In 1688 this town voted "that they would have a town 
house to keep school in, built this year, of eighteen foot 
square, besides the chimney space, with a suitable height 
for that service." Five years later they desired " a man 
that is in a capacity to teach both Latin and English, and, 
in time of exigency, to be helpful to Mr. Hooker in the 
ministry." For a man combining the requisite literary 
and ministerial attainments, they chose the Rev. John 
James. He was about twenty-seven years of age, having 
recently come from England, where he had been under the 
instruction of a Mr. Veal, a dissenting minister. He re- 
mained for at most one or two years when he had a call 



to preach in Haddam. Dr. David Dudley Field, in his 
"Statistical Account of the Town of Haddam," says 
"Some ludicrous anecdotes are transmitted respecting 
him." The Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, writing to John 
Winthrop of an attack on New London by French priva- 
teers on the morning of July 17, 1690, says "My wife 
and family were posted at your Honor's a considerable 
while, it being thought the most convenient place for the 
feminine rendevouz. Mr. James (who commands in 
chief among them), upon the coast alarm given, faceth to 
the mill, gathers like a snowball as he goes, makes a gen- 
eral muster at your Honor's, and so posts away with the 
greatest speed, to take the advantage of the neighboring 
rocky hills and craggy inaccessible mountains, so that 
whatever else is lost, Mr. James and the women are safe." 
Luke Hayes succeeded him as teacher of our school, and 
was in office at the date of which we write. All we know 
of his classical learning is that on his death, one Latin 
book was found among his possessions. Besides the pubhc 
school on the meeting-house green, there were doubtless 
private schools known as dames' schools, most excellent 
specimens of which have flourished within the memory 
of many of us. In 1676 Deacon Bull, the varied lore of 
whose account-book has made him a familiar personage, 
paid Ro bert Porter five shillings for schooling his son, 
John Bull. Whether Robert Porter, ancestor of the late 
president of Yale, himself taught school, or some member 
of his family taught a dame's school does not appear. 
The public school was mostly a winter school for boys 
who could then best be spared from the labors of the farm. 
The proper education in this town for females was settled 
by a judicial decision in 1656. Thomas Thomson in his 
will had ordered "that my wife shall well educate and 
bring up my children in Learning." The court in Hart- 
ford being asked to define what this education and learn- 
ing should be, decided " that the sons shall have learning 
to write plainly, and read distinctly in the Bible, and the 



10 



daughters to read, and sew sufficiently for the making of 
their ordinary linen." A most regrettable decision. Had 
the ladies of that day kept such diaries as their great 
granddaughters kept, what a glorious history of the times 
might be possible. Reading and writing seem to have 
been the only studies. Every free-born Englishman 
claimed the right to spell as he pleased. Samuel Johnson 
had not published his famous dictionary, and the great 
lexicographer of West Hartford had not even been born 
or his father before him. King James' bible allowed 
great freedom for individual choice. Give all words a 
sufficient length, or, if in doubt, add a final vowel would 
have been a safe rule. No one shirked the labor of writ- 
ing such words as catalogue at full length. Deacon Bull 
always spelled iron e-y-r-o-n, liquor 1-i-c-k-q-u-o-r, sugar 
s-h-u-g-a-r, salt s-a-u-1-t, not once but always. 

Would the Colonial Dames of today care to know of 
the housekeeping and daily life here two hundred years 
ago? I can give you just about as definite a picture of 
it as you could get of a village from which all the in- 
habitants had taken a temporary departure. I can show 
you all the contents of the house of Samuel Gridley, a 
well-to-do citizen, down to the most minute item the ap- 
praisers affixed a value to, when the good man had set his 
house in order for his departure to a better world. Let 
us enter, if you will, the porch in front where you may be 
surprised to find hung around such articles of out-of-door 
use as harnesses, saddles, the pillion and pillion-cloth on 
which the good dame rode to church behind the good man, 
a chest of tools, a cart rope, and many other things the 
Colonial Dame of today would order put somewhere else. 
Entering the great hall we shall find disposed around a 
chest, a great chair, four lesser ones, three cushions, and 
a pillow. Around the walls ready for instant use are a 
gun, pike, bayonet, rapier, backsword, and cutlass. Near 
by must have been a fireplace, for here we find trammels 
and hooks, pots and kettles, large and small, and a goodly 



II 



array of shining pewter, tankards, plates, basins, beakers, 
porringers, cups with handles, barrel cups, pewter meas- 
ures, and pewter bottles. There is much wooden ware, 
china ware, and bottles of family medicines with formid- 
able names. Here too is the family library of goodly vol- 
umes which we will not stop to read at present. From 
the hall we pass to the kitchen, where we find In the big 
fireplace a pair of cast-iron dogs weighing sixty-four 
pounds, two pairs of tongs, a peel, tv\^o trammels, and a 
jack. The main features of the kitchen are the loom, the 
great wheel, two linen wheels, a hand reel, and great piles 
of linen sheets, table cloths, towels, napkins, and other 
products of the loom and wheels. 

Returning through the hall we enter the parlor and 
are confronted with a tall bedstead with its calico curtains 
and calico vallance to match, the feather bed and all man- 
ner of blankets and coverlids. Three chests, a round 
table, a great chair, three lesser ones, and a cupboard 
complete the furniture. The cupboard has a carpet, by 
which is meant an elaborately embroidered covering dis- 
playing the skill of its owner. There now remains down- 
stairs only the leanto, which will not detain us long, though 
it probably detained Mrs. Gridley many a weary hour, 
for here are the cheese-press and churn, the butter tubs 
and all the machinery of the dairy, and last of all the hour 
glass by which all this weary work was timed. If you 
will now have the kindness to walk up-stairs you will find 
in the parlor chamber a bed with a silk grass pillow and a 
great supply of all manner of bedding. In a chest are 
twenty-one pounds of yarn, the work no doubt of the 
good dame. Mr. Gridley has also taken the liberty to 
store here fifty bushels of wheat and eighty of rye. In 
the hall chamber we find another bed and belongings, and 
bags of all manner of grain. The porch chamber Is wholly 
given up to malt, oats, and peas. In the garret are one 
hundred bushels of Indian corn. All this supply of grain 
was thus under the protection of the household cat, who in 



12 

those days killed the rat that ate the malt that lay In the 
house that Jack built. 

Life in this quiet village two hundred years ago had 
its comforts and even its pleasures. With ten or a dozen 
children in each household, and houses nearly contiguous, 
those big kitchen fireplaces with their blazing logs must 
have seen much robust merriment. The table was well 
supplied with all that healthy appetites demanded. The 
river abounded with shad, and a whole salmon cost but 
a shilling. The Indians taught them how to raise Indian 
corn and kept them well supplied with venison. Deacon 
Bull's ledger shows an account with Taphow, Shum, 
Arwous, Mintoo, Potocaw, Judas, and other hunters of 
the deer. He sold them hatchets for hunting, mended 
their guns, and made them hoes, the latter probably for 
the use of their squaws. A buckskin paid for a hoe and 
ten pounds of tallow for a hatchet. The Indians were 
useful in many ways. The woods still swarmed with wild 
animals. Many bounties of six and eight pence were paid 
for killing of wolves. Some animals supposed from their 
midnight roarings to be lions, gave the name of Lion's 
Hole or Lion's Hollow to sundry localities on the moun- 
tain. The animal was probably a catamount or wild cat. 

The manners and customs of this village, and its graver 
moralities seem to hav^e been most exemplary. Doubtless 
the gloomy ways of the Puritan drove some young men 
for relief into youthful indiscretions. Night-walking 
seems to have been the most common wandering from the 
straight and narrow way. Probably like Chllde Harold 
they 

" vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of night, 
Sore given to revel and ungodly glee." 

Night-walkers were not as a rule sentenced to pay 
money of which they were usually destitute, nor boarded 
idly in jail at the town's expense. On the meeting-house 



13 

green near the house of God stood the village stocks. 
The offender, so ran the law, was ordered " set on a few 
minutes before the Thursday afternoon lecture began, 
and kept on until a little after the close of the service." 
The Thursday sermon was none of the shortest. A 
similar fate awaited the youths who stole five watermelons 
from Richard Smith and bragged of their exploit, and 
those too who spoke " reproachfully of the Worshipful 
Thomas Wells, Esq., now at rest." To speak evil of 
dignitaries though long buried was a most serious offence. 

Of the books which our ancestors read by the light of 
the blazing logs and of the subjects which most interested 
them we have only a very limited knowledge. Only when 
a man died and the appraisers came to value his estate 
were his books named, and even then the entry was usually 
books, a certain number of pounds and shillings. Rarely 
did men so carefully describe such a library as belonged 
to Samuel Gridley, the blacksmith, who succeeded the oft- 
quoted Deacon Bull. From a somewhat intimate knowl- 
edge of the contents of these serious books, I presume 
their names alone will give you a sufficient knowledge of 
the literary taste of Farmlngton in 1706. They were an 
"Old Great Bible," next "KOMETOFPAOIA, Or a Dis- 
course Concerning Comets; wherein the Nature of Blaz- 
ing Stars is Enquired into," by Increase Mather, a scien- 
tific book written by a Puritan divine with a theological 
intent. A very entertaining book. The next was " Time 
and the End of Time," by John Fox, written on the sin 
of wasting time by a divine who had a grievance, having 
been invited to a dinner by a gentlewoman and kept wait- 
ing three hours while the fine lady was dressing. Next is 
" Sion in Distress or the Groans of the Protestant 
Church." A poem having reference to the Titus Oakes 
Plot, and to the peculiar sins in vogue at the court of 
Charles IL Then we find a " Spiritual Almanac," proba- 
bly the " Husbandry Spiritualized : Or the Heavenly Use 
of Earthly Things," by John Flavel, late minister of 



the Gospel." Next comes " The Unpardonable Sin," a fa- 
vorite subject. Next follows "The Doctrine of Divine 
Providence Opened and Applied," by Increase Mather, an 
attempt to justify the ways of God to man by stories from 
the Old Testament and from the Jewish Rabbis. Then 
we find "Man's Chief End to Glorify God," by Rev. John 
Bailey, a long lament more interesting to his dear friends 
than to us. Then comes " How to walk v/ith God, or 
Early Piety Exemplified." Of course the collection had 
" The Wonders of the Invisible Vv^orld," by Cotton 
Mather. Then follow "The Holy Life and Death of 
Mr. Henry Gearing," "The Great Concern; or A Seri- 
ous Warning," a copy of the New Testament, a book on 
numbers, a law book, and lastly " A short Catechism 
drawn out of the Word of God, by Samuel Stone, Minis- 
ter of the Word at Hartford on Connecticut, Boston in 
New England, Printed by Samuel Green for John Wads- 
worth of Farmington." But libraries and books and 
schools were matters pertaining to the quiet and seclusion 
of winter. Two hundred years ago today the winter was 
over and men were once more interested in the happenings 
around them. In Hartford the General i\ssembly had 
just closed its session. John Hooker was our representa- 
tive, and Capt. Thomas Hart, also from Farmington, was 
speaker of the house with a salary of thirty shillings. 
Their labors had been mostly confined to things now left to 
the courts. They had done two good things ; they repealed 
the laws against Quakers and the wretched tariff law for- 
bidding the free exportation of goods from the colony. 
They ended their labors with the proclamation of a day 
of fasting and prayer. And now that these worthy men 
have brought their meritorious public labors to an at least 
dignified conclusion and gone back to the daily labors of 
their farms, let us bid them adieu, happy to have been de- 
scended from the honest laborious men of yore. 



^BRABVOFCONGBESS 



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